hyacinthony: I was reminded by Morrison's poetic narrative voice at the end of part 2 of Vernon's narrative style. Both books convey a powerful and mysterious spiritual force embedded in the violence of post-slavery african american conditions.

In this book, a slave woman kills her daughter so she will avoid slavery. I believe Albert Murray (according to Edwin Yoder) has the best definition of this book: “the idea, though inspired by an actual event, was beyond silly. Whatever the evils of slavery, death was worse, and infanticide, after all, was a grave crime.” I couldn't agree with him more. (By the way, Mr. Murray was a black man; he died August 2013.) ( )

This is one of my favorite books. It is definitely my favorite Toni Morrison novel. I have read it multiple times and still find things about this book incredibly moving and important when I reread it. I love her voice, but I also love her humanity and depth when dealing with characters and subjects dramatically and darkly altered by slavery and loss. ( )

This was the first Toni Morrison book I read. After reading it, I intend to read everything she's written.

Her writing is heavy, but beautiful, and her prose will take a little getting used to if you haven't read anything by her before. Her works generally deal with race, with gender, sexuality, identity, self-expression in a really startlingly beautiful way.

Her characters are emotive, and raw, and vulnerable. Reading this book is like drinking a really strong, black coffee. I got a headache, and parts of it were bitter, but it was the best coffee I'd ever had.

Morrison has a really commanding voice. She isn't afraid to write unpleasant scenes. She will make you look. The other thing that I love about Morrison's voice is that the style is written almost lyrically, as if a person were speaking directly to you.

Morrison mentions in her afterword of this book, that Dostoyevsky wrote for the Russians, and yet other people read him, why shouldn't black authors do the same? (Or something to that affect, anyway.)

But I adore how unapologetically she writes. And I think this book is so, so valuable. ( )

Morrison never makes for an easy read. She makes demands on the reader. She has a really ugly painful subject here and she makes the best and the worst of it. She makes slavery and it's aftermath sound horrific which it was. She writes a masterpiece with undertones of those falsehoods we want to believe because they would seem to be payment for a debt we are owed or fear because we believe we are truly an awful person. She visits the land of PTSD with thoughts of past horrors and feared futures. I will always wonder what happened to the title character though it is not so much about her as about her effect on others. I don't get to have a happily ever after entirely sort of like real life. But it was good enough.

"Beloved" is Toni Morrison's fifth novel, and another triumph. Indeed, Ms. Morrison's versatility and technical and emotional range appear to know no bounds. If there were any doubts about her stature as a pre-eminent American novelist, of her own or any other generation, ''Beloved'' will put them to rest.

Wikipedia in English (2)

Toni Morrison gently reads her own Pulitzer Prize-winning work in the unabridged version of this riveting tale of ex-slave Sethe and the beloved ghost that haunts her. While Morrison makes occasional odd pauses in her reading, what is lost in smoothness is more than made up for in quiet intensity as the author reads words obviously deeply felt. Her intimate knowledge of the characters and their motivations lends this reading an authority that helps the listener sort out the breaks in time and dialogue in this complex story of a woman coming to terms with her enslaved past and the loss of her husband and baby daughter. (Running time: 12 hours, eight cassettes) --Kimberly Heinrichs

Staring unflinchingly into the abyss of slavery, this spellbinding novel transforms history into a story as powerful as Exodus and as intimate as a lullaby. Sethe, its protagonist, was born a slave and escaped to Ohio, but eighteen years later she is still not free. She has too many memories of Sweet Home, the beautiful farm where so many hideous things happened. And Sethe's new home is haunted by the ghost of her baby, who died nameless and whose tombstone is engraved with a single word: Beloved. Filled with bitter poetry and suspense as taut as a rope, Beloved is a towering achievement. After the Civil War ends, Sethe longingly recalls the two-year-old daughter whom she killed when threatened with recapture after escaping from slavery 18 years before.… (more)